Innehållsförteckning för Oct-2018 från UNCUT

“A LITTLE while ago, my daughter got me to do a Pink Floyd online quiz,” says Nick Mason. “I scored just over 50 per cent…” Nonetheless, the drummer, writer and motor-racing driver has consented to answer your questions on everything and anything Floyd-related and more. It’s an appropriate moment to speak with Mason – 2018 looks to be the busiest period in years for the de facto keeper of the Pink Floyd flame, as he prepares to head out on tour with his new project, Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, performing the band’s more experimental, pre-Dark Side material. “I thought I’d quite like to go back to work,” he explains of this rush of activity, “but I hadn’t intended it to be this full-on. It’s a long time since I’ve…

SONGS FOR A DEAD PILOT KRANKY, 1997 Low set up a home studio in Duluth for their fourth album, which allowed them more space to experiment. A distorted sewing machine provides the persistent beat of “Be There” and opener “Will the Night” sculpts an ambient drone into an uneasy overture, while the 13-minute “Born By The Wires” brilliantly, brutally deconstructs their sound. OWL (REMIX) VERNON YARD, 1998 Sparhawk said Low had nothing to do with this remix LP, released shortly after the band left Vernon Yard Records. But there are some interesting parallels between these mostly ambient remixes and the chopped-and-screwed sound of Double Negative . It’s not a great collection, but it does include a joyous club remix of “Words” by Jimmy Somerville. DRUMS AND GUNS…

1 One Man’s Ceiling Is Another Man’s Floor 2 Love 3 Can’t Run But 4 How The Heart Approaches What It Yearns 5 Pigs, Sheep And Wolves 6 René And Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After The War 7 The Teacher 8 Darling Lorraine 9 Some Folks’ Lives Roll Easy 10 Questions For The Angels Produced by: Paul Simon and Roy Halee Recorded at: Various studios around New York City and Los Angeles Personnel: Paul Simon (vocal, percussion, guitar, bass harmonica), Joel Wenhardt, Sullivan Fortner (piano, keyboards), Bill Frisell, Jim Oblon, Odair Assad, Sergio Assad, Vincent Nguini, Mark Stewart (guitars), John Patitucci, Renaud Garcia-Fons (bass), Nate Smith, Steve Gadd, Nate Smith, Marion Felder, Jack de Johnette (drums), Walter Blanding, Andy Snitzer, Joe Lovano (saxophone), Wynton Marsalis, Marcus Printup, CJ Camerieri…

As promised, Rosanne Cash will finally release her new album on Blue Note, She Remembers Everything , in October. The successor to 2014’s Grammy-winning The River & The Thread has been co-produced by her musician husband John Leventhal and Tucker Martine, whose credits include My Morning Jacket, Neko Case and The Decemberists. The latter’s Colin Meloy adds vocal harmonies to a couple of songs. Meanwhile, Cash has also been writing a musical with Leventhal and author John Weidman. Another cause for celebration that month is the arrival of Live From The Ryman , from Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit. Issued on Isbell’s own Southeastern label, it was recorded during the band’s sell-out run at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium last year.…

What were your main influences on Go To School ? The things that were solidly gone back to throughout the process were things like Oklahoma! , A Little Night Music and Assassins by Stephen Sondheim, and The King And I … It was mainly those. We’ve been listening to rock for so long, leftfield stuff like that can be more exciting, especially from the point of view of a writer. As the cover states, this is very much a ‘musical’ rather than a concept album, right? They tried to tell us not to put that! Not really, but someone on the team said, “Maybe you just wanna say ‘Presented By The Lemon…

What was the impetus for this album? It began as acoustic guitar; that’s the basis of the record and that’s what gives it the consistency. It started with the song “Gravity”, which I wrote a while ago and didn’t fit on the last two records. So I built the album round that song. I wanted to find a home for it as I loved it so much. So I thought why not write the whole album like it? It’s certainly reflective. At 60, I thought if you are ever going to be reflective, now is the time. How were the strings added? I met Hannah Peel, who did most of the arrangements. I sent her “Aspects” and she did the arrangement and I loved it so much I asked her…

THIS is the thing about the charisma of premature death. Absolution usually follows. After Joe Strummer died in December 2002, the Strummer Legend was quickly burnished into a holy glow, a posthumous radiance. Joe was no longer The Man Who Broke Up The Clash and it was like he hadn’t spent the best part of a decade drunk or on holiday. In the way people always have, they saw him more clearly when he was no longer there. They regarded him now as they might the Burning Bush of Biblical repute or a tablet of stone inscribed with wisdom’s words, God’s hip voice. “Raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer,” Craig Finn sang on The Hold Steady’s 2008 track “Constructive Summer”, giving voice to the feelings of many. Whatever the…

The Return Of The Durutti Column FACTORY RECORDS, 1980 Despite a sandpaper sleeve, Vin Reilly’s debut could hardly have been less abrasive. Showcasing Reilly’s delicately melodic guitar, producer Martin Hannett kept distractions to a minimum: birdsong on opener “Sketch For Summer” and occasional, simple rhythms, most notable during “Requiem For A Father”. 8/10 Vini Reilly FACTORY RECORDS, 1989 Following 1987’s more technologically complex The Guitar And Other Machines , co-producer Stephen Street returned to oversee this similarly dynamically varied set. Dissuaded from singing by Tony Wilson, Reilly instead brought in not only guest vocalists but also sampled Otis Redding and Tracy Chapman for the exquisite “Otis”. 8/10 A Paean To Wilson KOOKY, 2010 Starting with a loop of Tony Wilson asking “ Is this an art…

NEXT time around, John Grant returns with the synthy, irreverent Love Is Magic , and Cat Power hoves back into view with Wanderer . Tim Hecker follows up Love Streams with Konoyo , and Phosphorescent releases C’est La Vie , his first album for five years. There are surprising new records from veterans, too, such as Yoko Ono’s Warzone and Hawkwind’s Road To Utopia , created with Mike Batt. As for reissues, there’s Tom Petty’s An American Treasure , the final load of Felt LPs and a 50th-anniversary version of the Small Faces’ Ogdens’ …. All this plus ex-busker Mary Lou…

SPIRITUALIZED teased And Nothing Hurt online using Morse code. For Pierce, the sound of distress has its own kind of poetry… “I use Morse code on one of the tracks [‘ Sail On Through’ ]. Everybody knows that noise as the sound of distress, so it fitted with everything. I’d been doing things where the lyric was in Morse and it sounds really beautiful, but I haven’t released that yet. It sounds really weird, like strange jazz, like it was a language. It’s almost like when you listen to a Serge Gainsbourg or [ Spanish musician ] Nacho Vegas track: I don’t speak either language but I know there’s a poetry there, and those Morse things felt like that. I know there’s…

FOR Joe Boyd, the development of popular music in the 1960s can be traced directly against the backdrop of the political climate. “It’s an arc that starts with the folk movement and over the course of the ’60s – bang, bang, bang, bang – JFK down, Malcolm X down, Martin Luther King down, Bobby Kennedy down,” he says. “The ’68 Democratic Convention was another turning point, and by the end of that year people were in despair at the fact Nixon was in the White House. The kind of young person who would have signed up to register voters in Mississippi in 1963, by 1969 was dropping acid and tripping in the lights.” But not everybody gave over to hedonism. Boyd singles out several black artists who didn’t have the…

NON-STOP EROTIC CABARET SOME BIZZARE, 1981 Recorded in a month in New York’s Media Sound studios, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret stands up as one of the greatest debuts of the 1980s. Written as a fantasy of Soho seediness, it was supercharged by the band’s initiation into the ecstatic clubland of early-’80s NYC. Despite all the sex dwarves and seedy films, it manages, with “Say Hello Wave Goodbye”, to break your heart. THE ART OF FALLING APART SOME BIZZARE, 1983 Sick of being marketed as a teenybop act, Almond and Ball dialled up the darkness on tracks like “Baby Doll” (prostitution, heroin addiction) and “Numbers” (the emptiness of anonymous sex). Typically they consigned their best song of this period, “Martin” (inspired by Romero’s tale of a teenage vampire),…

1961: Aretha Franklin signs to Columbia and makes her first secular album. 1966: After nine albums and little success, Columbia drop her. November 1966: Jerry Wexler signs her to Atlantic Records. January 24, 1967: Franklin records “I’ve Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” at FAME studios with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. February 10, 1967: Released as her debut single on Atlantic, b/w “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man”. March 10, 1967. Her first Atlantic album, I’ve Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You , is released, recorded with the same core band. April 15, 1967: “I’ve Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” peaks at No 9 in the US pop chart. April 29, 1967: The follow-up, “Respect”, is…

“RICHARD always brings pretty much finished songs and arrangements to the table, and if anything needs to be changed, it’s very slight. 13 Rivers was a two-week endeavour – I guess that’s kinda fast for records today, but with Richard it’s usually plug in and go. I love the blues tune we did, ‘The Dog In You’ – it’s got a little Scottish lilt, it’s not your typical shuffle. Richard doing the blues could be an oxymoron, but rooted in Celtic music, you’ve got this Scottish Celtic-blues track that’s really unique. “I love a lot of the Richard & Linda stuff, and ‘No Matter’ seems to go in that direction for me. Taras and I are lucky, because Richard’s generous – he really allows us to…

JOHN GRANT Love Is Magic BELLA UNION You couldn’t ask for much more from Grant’s magnificent fourth: love, death, synthesisers, a song called “Smug Cunt”, plus crazed ruminations on ISIS and yoghurt. CONNAN MOCKASIN Jassbusters MEXICAN SUMMER Priapic Kiwi oddball brilliantly refines his queasy slowjam formula on what should be a breakthrough album. Think JJ Cale meets Midnite Vultures-era Beck… CAT POWER Wanderer DOMINO First album in six years from Chan Marshall finds her travelling the lonely desert road, joined briefly by her most committed disciple, Lana Del Rey. ELVIS COSTELLO Look Now CONCORD Co-writes with Burt Bacharach and Carole King, soulful arrangements and wry meditations on Britishness, masterfully delivered with just a hint of the old sneer. CAVE Allways DRAG CITY Bitchin Bajas’ Cooper Crain…

THE first 16 minutes of Double Negative – essentially the first three songs – contain some of the most bracing music Low have ever made. “Quorum” opens the album with a blast of distortion, which coagulates into rhythmic, vertiginous waves. When Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker begin to sing, their voices are distorted and scrambled, yet their harmonies remain oddly intact, even catchy. Everything sounds distressed, and scarred, raw like an exposed nerve. As that song melts into “Dancing & Blood”, the commotion morphs into a strange, insistent beat, like a pounding heart or a timer counting down to some awful event. Parker’s voice rises above it all, barely escaping the mire, giving the album its first human-sounding moment before the song is overtaken with static. It’s hard to tell…

STEVE ADEY Do Me A Kindness GRAND HARMONIUM 8/10 Nine songs from the dark side given radical makeovers Over two LPs and a couple of EPs, this Birmingham-born, Edinburgh-based songwriter has perfected a grandiose, gothic style that borders on the spiritual. He’s not a fast worker, and this third set – nine covers plus a Hermann Hesse poem – was initially devised as a diversion from that difficult third album. The songs betray his influences – Dylan, Nick Cave, Bill Callahan, Portishead – but these are not literal readings. Bowie’s “Sense Of Doubt” is propelled at a progressive clip, PJ Harvey’s “The Devil” swirls in a Dr Jekyll fog, and Morrissey’s “Everyday Is Like Sunday” becomes a funereal clicktrack hymn in which armageddon waits behind the bus shelter. ALASTAIR McKAY…

This album – what do you call it? The third one. [ laughs ] I don’t know how we ended up with this name, but I don’t think any of us are particularly proud of it. It was going to be called Feature Wall – you know when people have feature walls in their house? Like, a fake brick bit. We were going to make the artwork the worst feature wall that ever existed. But then Bill designed the cover, and it had the three echelons on it, so we called it that. Not the most commercial move, but that’s never been a concern for us really. One constant in your work has been the influence of movie soundtracks… Absolutely. BEAK> did a soundtrack…

True Meanings PARLOPHONE 8/10 THE past decade of Paul Weller’s career has been defined by his drive for change. From the varied beats of 2008’s 22 Dreams, through the electronica of Sonik Kicks and on to last year’s easily overlooked experimental soundtrack to Jawbone, there’s been a restless desire for new sounds. While that’s been exciting to witness, it’s also sometimes overshadowed the fact Weller is still an exceptional songwriter. There are times, perhaps, when less might have been more – so a song like the gospel-tinged “The Cranes Are Back” on 2017’s A Kind Revolution lacked some of the immediate beauty of the original demo, which featured little more than vocal and piano. For True Meanings, Weller hasn’t quite stripped things back that far, but he has produced his…

THE 101’ERS Elgin Avenue Breakdown (Revisited) EMI, 2005 This expanded version of the original 1978 comp added a swathe of live tracks recorded at Camberwell Art School that captured the band’s legendary velocity. Includes their ecstatic cover of Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips”, a deranged take on “Gloria” and a reworking of New Orleans classic “Junco Partner” that was not improved on by The Clash on Sandinista! . 10/10 BIG AUDIO DYNAMITE 10 Upping Street CBS, 1986 When Joe couldn’t get Mick to reform The Clash because he had his own thing going with BAD, he basically joined the BAD crew for their second album, eventually installing himself as co-producer and co-writing over half the tracks. Joe gave 10 Upping Street a harder,…

THE BAND Music From Big Pink 50th Anniversary Edition CAPITOL/UMG 9/10 Remixes, limited vinyl editions and extra tracks for Americana lodestar Such has been the influence of The Band’s 1968 debut that it’s hard, now, to hear it as a revolutionary document. It’s still an extraordinary record, but seems to exist in the fog of its own timelessness – a song such as “The Weight” with its weary chorus of “Take the load off, Annie” sounds as if it was never new. Fifty years on, Big Pink can be seen as one of the foundation stones of what became known as Americana – not just the country strain, but blues, gospel, outsidery mountain music (indeed, when they do straight country – Lefty Frizzell’s “Long Black Veil” – The Band are…

ON a Friday evening in 1968, Jimi Hendrix paused during a show at Newark’s grand Symphony Hall and said softly into his microphone: “This is for a friend.” The previous day – April 4 – Martin Luther King had been assassinated; the latest horrific development in the so-called “long hot summer” that had rocked America for the past seven months. Among the eyewitnesses to Hendrix’s Symphony Hall dedication was Robert Wyatt, whose band, Soft Machine, supported The Jimi Hendrix Experience on their spring ’68 tour of the US. “It was quite a moment,” he recalls today. “It was a low-key remark – but everyone knew who it was for. What was striking was that rather than intense anger, his response was intense sadness. We were all a bit lost for…

ALBERT and Arthur Allen – aka Tunde Ra and TaharQa Aleem – met Hendrix in the early ’60s, when they were asked to evict a squatter from a girlfriend’s house. “We had no idea who this was, we just had to get him out the apartment,” says TaharQa. “As we approached, we could hear this guitar. This amazing music led us to the apartment we were targeting. It was mesmerising. We rang the doorbell, the music stopped and Jimi opened the door.” The trio became friends, even living together for a time in a house in Manhattan. After Hendrix left for London in 1966, the Aleems lost touch as they began to make their own entrance into music. When Jimi returned to New York in 1968, he reacquainted himself with…

JOHN Sinclair was embedded in the history of anti-establishment music, from his days as a folk-digging student to his love of avant-garde jazz. As manager of the MC5, he attempted to channel some of this into a rock’n’ roll band, the fruits of which could be heard, in glimpses, on 1969’s Kick Out The Jams . “They were serious, but if you listen to their songs, they didn’t talk about overthrowing the government,” says Sinclair today. “But we thought political was what you did. It was like spirituality, it was how you lived, not what you talked about.” It was the avant-garde jazz world that Sinclair felt more accurately expressed the sentiments of the ‘68 generation. “It was a movement that reflected what was happening socially…

SUICIDE BALL: “I got into Suicide at art college. It’s quite a revolutionary idea, having punk attitude but just using a drum machine stuck on the ‘bossa nova’ setting. I liked their sense of melancholy. But we never copied them at all. I used to know Alan Vega quite well and he was always slightly pissed off that we’ve had this success that they never saw.” PET SHOP BOYS (pictured) ALMOND: “Neil did interview us back when he was at Smash Hits , but I don’t think he was taking notes. They did it better than we did it in a way, they fine-tuned it, made it much more commercially successful. But everyone uses a blueprint, Neil and Chris developed their own style. I was…

SUPERFUZZ BIGMUFF PLUS EARLY SINGLES SUB POP, 1990 [RECORDED AND ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 1988] The early work compiled, including immortal first 45 “Touch Me I’m Sick” MARK ARM: I’d worked with [engineer] Jack Endino in Green River, and Steve and I had been with The Thrown-Ups. We were tracking live, with vocal overdubs and a couple of guitar overdubs. It went pretty quickly – the five songs we recorded for the “Touch Me I’m Sick” single were over a weekend, or maybe just one evening, then another day of mixing. I can’t imagine “Superfuzz” took more than a couple of days. STEVE TURNER: It was at Reciprocal with Endino, the mad genius. I was getting used to the studio process, and obviously Jack knew what he was doing. We drank…

WIND CHIMES SMILEY SMILE Salvaged from the remains of SMiLE and given a simpler arrangement, this became a gorgeous showcase for the band’s fluid harmonies. WILD HONEY WILD HONEY The album’s buzzing title track, driven by organ and Paul Tanner’s theremin, features an inspired lead vocal by Carl Wilson. LITTLE BIRD FRIENDS The Dennis Wilson song that blew his brother Brian’s mind. Who knew that Dennis was a master of the spiritual funk ballad? FRIENDS FRIENDS A post-psychedelic waltz with a simple lyric about the power of togetherness and mutual trust. Only a minor hit, but it should’ve been huge. BE WITH ME 20/20 Dennis Wilson’s off-kilter gem presaged the unique soft-rock intimations of his 1977 solo masterpiece, Pacific Ocean Blue .…

LUCKY Directed by John Carroll Lynch Starring Harry Dean Stanton, Ron Livingston Opens Sept 14 Cert 15 7/10 COLD WAR Directed by Pawel Pawlikowski Starring Tomasz Kot, Joanna Kulig Opens August 31 Cert 15 8/10 BLACKKKLANSMAN Directed by Spike Lee Starring John David Washington, Adam Driver Opens Aug 24 Cert 15 9/10 YARDIE Directed by Idris Elba Starring Aml Ameen, Shantol Jackson Opens August 31 Cert 15 6/10 AMERICAN ANIMALS Directed by Bart Layton Starring Evan Peters, Barry Keoghan Opens September 7 Cert 15 9/10…

VINCE MARTIN Adventurous folk artist (1937–2018) VINCE MARTIN’S brush with chart stardom began and ended in 1956 when “Cindy, Oh Cindy”, recorded with The Tarriers, broke into the Billboard Top 10. It was merely a diversion from Martin’s true calling as an influential figure on both the Greenwich Village and Coconut Grove folk scenes. Signed to Elektra, he and Fred Neil cut 1964’s Tear Down The Walls, a key text in the development of folk rock. Featuring John Sebastian and Felix Pappalardi, the album’s adventurism, later cited as inspirational by The Byrds and the Grateful Dead, swam directly against the prevailing folk tides. “At the time there was so much going on in the Village and the sin was eclecticism,” Martin later explained to Goldmine. Martin’s solo debut,…

HE WEARS IT WELL I’d like to commend Uncut on the recent Rod Stewart cover story [September issue]. Swanning about in a sports car in Beverly Hills sounded great fun, and Rod acquitted himself well in a more-than-expected open and frank way. He was particularly honest, for example, about the writing of “The Killing Of Georgie”. “If I looked back on that now and said, ‘I’m going to write a song about homosexuality,’ I’d have said, ‘Fuck off!’ It would have scared me.” Even though for decades Rod The Mod has enjoyed a rich LA lifestyle few of us can even imagine, he still comes over as a down-to-earth and sincere family man with an abiding love for music… Even after all these years! More colourful interviews with colourful characters,…

“It’s less about records and more about community” AARON DESSNER BACK in 2007, Aaron Dessner of The National wrote a minimalist piano sketch called “Big Red Machine” with the intention of working up it somehow for his Red Hot charity compilation Dark Was The Night. Having recently snagged an early copy of For Emma, Forever Ago, he made contact with Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon via MySpace. Not only did Vernon agree to donate a brand new track for the album, he also took Dessner’s piano sketch and fashioned it into a fully realised song within a fortnight. “I was struck by his generosity and fearlessness,” says Dessner. “We finally met in person at the concert to celebrate the release of Dark Was The Night. Justin ended up singing with The…

Ramble on! To celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, Uncut’s Ultimate Music Guide to Led Zeppelin is back in shops. The new Deluxe Edition format includes reviews of all the latest Zep reissues… Out on August 24, NME Gold: The Best Of NME 1970-1974 compiles the finest inky journalism of the era, with Pink Floyd on the cover. On the other side of the ‘70s musical divide, Uncut’s Ultimate Genre Guide to Punk is still on sale… Saturday October 13 is National Album Day in the UK, with the likes of Orbital, Public Service Broadcasting and Matt Berry roped in to extol the delights of the long-playing record… This year’s Mercury Music Prize shortlist is another fairly safe affair,…

1. Quorum 2. Dancing & Blood 3. Fly 4. Tempest 5. Always Up 6. Always Trying To Work It Out 7. The Son, The Sun 8. Dancing & Fire 9. Poor Sucker 10. Rome (Always In The Dark) 11. Disarray Label: Sub Pop Producer: BJ Burton, Low Recorded at: April Base, Eau Claire, Wisconsin; The Terrarium, Minneapolis Personnel: Mimi Parker (drums, piano, synth, vocals), Alan Sparhawk (guitar, synth, drum machines, vocals), Steve Garrington (bass, piano, synth, drum machines), Maaika van der Linde (bass flute)…

1 Opening Station 2 I Don’t Know 3 Come On To Me 4 Happy With You 5 Who Cares 6 Fuh You 7 Confidante 8 People Want Peace 9 Hand In Hand 10 Dominoes 11 Back In Brazil 12 Do It Now 13 Caesar Rock 14 Despite Repeated Warnings 15 Station II 16 Hunt You Down/Naked/C-Link Produced by: Greg Kurstin; Ryan Tedder & Zach Skelton (“Fuh You”); co-produced by Paul McCartney Recorded at: Henson Studios, Los Angeles; Hog Hill Mill, Sussex; Abbey Road Studios, London; Patriot Studios, Los Angeles; KLB Studios, São Paulo Personnel includes: Paul McCartney (vocals, guitars, bass, percussion, keyboards, harmonica), Greg Kurstin (various), Abe Laboriel Jr (drums), Brian Ray (bass, electric sitar), Rusty Anderson (guitar), Paul Wickens, Greg Phillinganes (keyboards), Tim Loo, Vanessa Freebairn-Smith, Jodi Burnett (cello),…

1 The Soul Searchers 2 Glide 3 Mayfly 4 Gravity 5 Old Castles 6 What Would He Say? 7 Aspects 8 Bowie 9 Wishing Well 10 Come Along 11 Books 12 Movin’ On 13 May Love Travel With You 14 White Horses Produced by: Paul Weller, except “The Soul Searchers”, produced by Weller/Conor O’Brien, and “Movin’ On”, produced by Weller/White Label Recorded at: Black Barn Studios, Surrey Personnel include: Paul Weller, Conor O’Brien, Steve Pilgrim, Martin Carthy, Steve Cradock, Lucy Rose, Sheema Murkajee, Noel Gallagher, Steve Brookes, Danny Thompson, Barrie Cadogan, Andy Crofts, Ben Gordelier, Jan Stan Kybert, Charles Rees, Rod Argent, Anth Brown, Tom Doyle, Daniella Ganeva, Tom Heel, Erland Cooper, Maxine Boxall, Kamalbir Singh Nandra, Kotono Sato and many more…

How did you foster this deep musical connection you share? Anna: We’ve played music together for so long. We just have this big set of friends and family who are musicians and we all sang and played old-time and traditional music together. This sounds like a cliché but singing a duet around the campfire was just something we did. But we haven’t had this sort of one thing we do together before. I do feel like it’s a new process, learning how to harmonise and work together. Heather: Anna is also the master harmoniser of the two of us. Man, I am harmony-handicapped or something! I mean, I can get it when it’s given to me but trying to figure it out on my own, I can get very frustrated.…

ARIEL PINK POM POM (2014) Pierce plays guitar on a few tracks on the LA oddball’s wildest album. “I was in LA doing some shows and he [ Pink ] came round and said, ‘Do you wanna come down to the studio?’ It was astonishing what they were doing, all over the place. I don’t even know if the mix of that record shows the depth of what’s there. They can pull from ’70s funk records, soul and still make rock’n’roll records and they don’t sound like fusion.” YAK Pierce dabbled in production for the young London art-rockers. “I produced Yak and it was an absolute joy. I find it so much easier to please somebody else than to please myself, or to find a place where they…

WHEN Aretha Franklin first entered FAME studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, in January 1967, the 24-year-old singer was crackling with potential. “I hadn’t heard much about her,” recalls Spooner Oldham, the in-house piano player at FAME. “I had an LP by her, on Columbia, and I’d maybe listened to it once and put it aside. In my mind it was cocktail-bar background music. I ignored it, to be honest.” Having grown up singing gospel at her father’s Baptist church in Detroit, at 18, inspired by Sam Cooke’s switch to secular music, Franklin had signed to Columbia Records, who had thrown her extraordinary voice at everything from jazz to easy listening to straight-out pop. She released nine albums for the label between 1961 and 1966, but nothing quite stuck. In November…

“FAIRPORT were a very lyric-conscious band, and we loved to do covers of good lyric-writers, mostly folk writers like Phil Ochs and Joni Mitchell. We got hold of Joni Mitchell’s demos very early on, before she recorded, through Joe Boyd. We went to a publisher and they gave us her acetates. Then we went to Dylan’s publisher: ‘Have you got any Dylan songs that no-one’s heard?’ ‘Here you go!’ They gave us like 12 Dylan acetates, which were basically the Basement Tapes, so we were first through the door with that. “I went to Big Pink last year, which was great fun. Someone I know was renting it, so they invited me along to check out the basement. It’s got a vibe to it! It’s a fairly small space, supports…

“YEAH, it’s still fun,” says Mark Arm, looking back over his 30 years as Mudhoney’s singer and guitarist. “We wouldn’t do it otherwise – there’s nothing else to gain!” The Seattle band return in September with their 10th album, Digital Garbage, still sounding as raw and irreverent as ever. Labels and bass players may have changed over their career, but the group’s process remains the same. “Oh, we still just bash it out in the basement,” says guitarist Steve Turner. “Someone brings in a riff or two and we pile on. Hopefully we get a decent recording of it, then Mark works on lyrics and arranging the mess.” They still worship the likes of The Stooges and the MC5, but Arm and co have also fed obsessions with Pink Floyd…

WHILE still an aspiring teenage guitarist, Wayne Kramer is taken aside by his mother for a stiff chat. She warns him that being a professional musician is a hard life: long nights in bars and clubs, the curse of drink and drugs, the bad voodoo of wanton women. “If I wasn’t committed after our talk,” writes Kramer, “I was afterwards.” The arc of dizzying ascent, steep fall and hard-won redemption is a familiar one. Few, however, have pushed those contours to such vivid extremes as the MC5 guitarist. In The Hard Stuff, his role as a founding member of the band that advocated dope, rock’n’roll and fucking in the streets becomes almost a secondary narrative. Half the book is taken up with drug-dealing, thieving, trading guns, parlaying with mobsters and…

ELVIS: ’68 COMEBACK SPECIAL OPENS AUGUST 16 For one night only, the King is back in cinemas with this legendary performance special. CHRISTOPHER ROBIN OPENS AUGUST 17 Pooh and co return to help adult Christopher Robin (Ewan McGregor). Being Disney, the toys sound like leftovers from old American cartoons. ONE NOTE AT A TIME OPENS AUGUST 24 Dr John, Irma Thomas and more reflect on attempts to rebuild the New Orleans music scene after Hurricane Katrina. THE CHILDREN ACT OPENS AUGUST 24 Latest Ian McEwan adaptation. Emma Thompson’s High Court judge tries a difficult case. THE KING OPENS AUGUST 24 Director Eugene Jarecki travels round the States in Presley’s 1963 Roller reflecting on the King’s legacy. THE HAPPYTIME MURDERS OPENS AUGUST 27 Human/Muppet buddy flick has a flesh-and-blood cop and…

AMOS MILBURN Bad, Bad Whiskey (1950) Have you ever heard that song? “Bad, bad whiskey/ Made me lose my happy home.” My daddy was an alcoholic and that’s why it stuck in my mind. I used to sing that song around the home all the time, to make him feel bad. My sister Maggie and I, we would harmonise and daddy would look at us, kinda upset: “Don’t sing that song any more!” We’d be like, “Yes sir!” and we’d go round the back of the house and sing it again. That song would fill the dancefloor in our tiny community every time they put it on. Because all the guys did on the weekend was drink, they didn’t have anything else to do. RUTH BROWN (Mama) He Treats Your…